Outcast Page 18

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The pack is leaving without him, and Wolf knows this must be so--but it hurts. The full-grown wolves tread neatly in the paw prints of the leader, but the cubs jostle one another, pouncing on interesting bits of moss. Digger and Snap see that Wolf isn't following and scamper back to fetch him.Come on! Don't get left behind! Mournfully, Wolf wags his tail. * The lead female gathers the cubs, and they trot after her, looking back in puzzlement. Darkfur is the last to leave. A wistful glance over her shoulder, then she too disappears. 307

  Wolf woke with a jolt. Lying in the mud, he felt sorrow press upon him. The pack was gone.

  Through the trees came the sound of the taillesses beginning to stir. Wolf padded along the rise to sniff the scents.

  Since the Big Wet had come roaring through, everything had changed. The Thunderer was gone, and the Big Wet was at peace, although it had grown, and there were fish in the trees, which was odd. The Hidden Ones were quiet, as they had their island to themselves; and the taillesses were no longer hunting Tall Tailless, but had welcomed him back. Wolf didn't understand why.

  Tall Tailless had changed too. Over the past Lights and Darks, his scent had altered and his howls had become deeper. Wolfdidknow the reason for this. Unlike wolf cubs, tailless cubs take an extremely long time to grow up, but even they manage it eventually. Tall Tailless was almost full-grown. Right now he was in the Den with the other taillesses, having one of his endless sleeps. Wolf wished he would wake up and sense that his pack-brother needed him. But he didn't come.

  "Time to go back," said Fin-Kedinn, and Renn, sitting on a rock above the healing spring, nodded but didn't move.

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  Nearby, a group of Otters was returning the sacred clay to the Lake by washing it off their faces. Bale stood at the cliff edge, lost in thought, and Torak was searching the ferns for his name-pebble.

  Renn wanted to help, but she couldn't muster the courage. He hadn't really talked to her since he'd found out about her mother. She wasn't sure if they were all right again--or if everything had changed.

  The Otters had arrived in their reed boats at dawn. It turned out that they hadn't needed warnings of the flood, as their Mage had read the signs and led them to safety. That was why Yolun had been sent to the Forest clans' camp: to warnthem.

  Nor had the Otters seemed surprised when Fin-Kedinn told them of the Viper Mage. They'd accepted it as they'd accepted the flood which had destroyed their camp-then quietly taken over the funeral rites. After bearing the body to a remote bay on the north shore, they'd washed the corpse, laid it on a Death Platform, and covered it in juniper branches so that it wouldn't walk. Then they'd led everyone to the spring, to be purified. They'd gently insisted that Renn should keep a little apart, because, as she'd put the Death Marks on the corpse, she would be unclean for the next three days. She didn't mind. It was a relief. That's what she told herself.

  "She left no trace," said Torak, making her jump.

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  He stood on a boulder behind her. She couldn't see his face for the sun.

  "You didn't find the name-pebble?" she said.

  He shook his head. "What should I do about that?"

  She noted that he saidI, notwe,and wondered if that meant something. Out loud she said, "We'll ask Saeunn. She'll know."

  The Raven Mage had remained at the new camp on the Hogback, and although Renn would never have admitted it, it was reassuring to know she was there. If Magecraft was needed, Saeunn would do it. Torak looked over the Lake. "The only thing I found was her snake basket. Empty." He paused. "They didn't feel evil, those snakes. Maybe they'll like being free." Renn broke off a fern frond and tore it to bits.

  Why can't you just say it? she thought. Torak, I'm sorry I never told you. But it doesn't change anything, does it? Not really?

  But Torak mumbled something about helping Bale look for the wreckage of the skinboat, and then he was gone, and she'd missed her chance. Fin-Kedinn came and sat beside her.

  Renn said, "He knows about the Viper Mage. I mean, about me."

  "Yes, he told me."

  "Did he? What did he say?"

  "Just that he knows." She scrunched up the fern and threw it away.

  Fin-Kedinn asked her who else knew, and she said, "Only Bale." Fin-Kedinn said he thought some of the older Ravens had recognized the Viper Mage despite, the green clay, and that Renn should tell them when things had settled down, and she said she would. Fin-Kedinn said, "Are you sorry she's dead?" "No....I don't know." She scowled. "I hated her for so long, and now she's gone. Somehow it feels worse."

  He nodded.

  He looked tired. Renn saw the gray hairs flecking his dark-red beard; the lines at the corners of his eyes. With a twist of terror, she realized that he was getting older. People died when they were younger than him. But he was Fin-Kedinn; he couldn't die.

  "Why can't things stay the same?" she cried.

  Fin-Kedinn followed a damselfly skimming the water. "Because that's how it is. Everything changes, all the time. Mostly, you don't notice." He turned to her. "The thing to remember, Renn, is that not every change is bad."

  She drew a breath that ended in a gulp.

  Fin-Kedinn said, "Torak was outcast. Now he's not. That's a good change. But it'll take him a while to get used to it." Using his staff, he rose to his feet. "We'll go back now. You're exhausted." 311

  "No I'm not," she lied.

  He snorted. "When was the last time you had anything to eat?"

  That night the clans held a feast to give thanks for surviving the flood.

  The fish had mysteriously returned to the Lake, and although the Otters didn't dare remark on this aloud for fear of chasing away the good luck, there was a lightness in them as they bustled about, directing the preparations.

  Like everyone else, Torak and Bale had to help, but Renn, being unclean, wasn't allowed. She hung around the camp, trying not to look spare, then went to find Wolf. She didn't, but she heard him howling. He sounded sad. She guessed that he was missing the pack, and resolved to take him a treat to cheer him up. Before the feast could begin, the best of everything was placed in a reed boat and taken to the Lake; then everyone settled down to eat. It was a cool, still night, and they sat around a long-fire: Otter and Boar Clan, Wolf and Raven. All except Renn, who'd been given her own little blaze at the edge of camp. The food was better than she'd expected, and Fin-Kedinn was right, she was ravenous. There was stewed elk and succulent bream roasted over alderwood fires; toasted trout cheeks and crisp golden cakes of reed

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  pollen with sweet, sticky gobbets of reed gum; and the thickest, smelliest stickleback grease, which the Otters had taken with them when they'd abandoned camp. This Renn avoided, but she saw Torak--who didn't know any better--struggling to compose his features after his first mouthful.

  He sat in the place of honor with the clan leaders, looking uncomfortable with the attention. Renn saw him self-consciously touching the outcast tattoo on his forehead; but either he didn't see her or he was avoiding her. She told herself not to worry.

  Not far from Torak sat Bale. He caught Renn's eye and seemed about to smile, but checked himself. They hadn't yet spoken of what he'd done, and she guessed that he wasn't sure how she felt. She gave him a brief smile, and he looked relieved.

  When the eating was over, the Otters collected all the fish bones that were too small to be useful and took them to the Lake, so that they could be born again as new fish. Then the Otter Mage twins stood up and started to sing.

  Like a silver stream falling into a pool of clear water, their voices dropped into the listening silence. In her head, Renn saw the dark of the Beginning, when all the world was water. Then a diverbird dived to the bottom and scooped up a speck of mud in its beak and flew back to the surface--and made the earth. 313 Now they were singing a new song. This time Renn saw the viper who stole the sacred clay and made the Lake sick. The Lake sought the aid of the World Spirit, who loosed the waters behind
the ice and washed away the evil; and the Forest people would have been swept away too, if they hadn't been warned by the Clanless Wanderer. Then the boy from the Sea killed the viper, and peace returned.

  When the song was over, everyone bowed to Torak, and he went red. The Boar Clan Leader's bow was grudging, but Aki's was wholehearted. Standing up to his father had given him new respect for himself, and he'd relaxed a lot. Maheegun and the Wolf Clan bowed lowest of all.

  By now it was nearly dawn. Surely, thought Renn, the feast must be over soon. Food had made her feel braver. She would simply march up to Torak and say what had to be said. But now the Otter Leader was giving gifts, so once again she had to wait.

  Bale was given a diverbird claw as an amulet--so that, like the most skilled of water creatures, he would always stay afloat.

  Torak got a wristband made from a pike's lower jaw, sheathed in elk hide, so that he would be as skilled a hunter as the pike. And his knife had been repaired; in the hole left by the fire-opal lay a piece of 314

  greenstone, precisely cut to fit.

  Just when Renn was feeling left out, Yolun came and laid something at her feet. He bowed, murmuring his thanks for the part she'd played in saving his beloved Lake. His gift was a beautiful little beaver-tooth knife with a hilt carved like a fish's tail. Dawn came, and at last people went off to sleep. Suddenly there was Torak, coming toward her.

  Renn stood up, scattering her bowl and spoon, which she'd forgotten were still in her lap.

  Torak helped her retrieve them and gave her an awkward nod. "Renn ..."

  "Yes?" she said, more sharply than she'd intended.

  "Ah, Torak," said Fin-Kedinn, coming over to them.

  For once in her life, Renn wasnotglad to see her uncle.

  "Come with me," said the Raven Leader, unperturbed. "There's something we need to do."

  Torak opened his mouth, then shut it again.

  "Where are we going?" said Renn.

  Fin-Kedinn motioned her back. "No, Renn," he said gently, "just Torak. This isn't for you."

  Torak threw her a glance that could have meant anything. Then he followed the Raven Leader into the Forest.

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  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Torak bit back his impatience as he followed Fin-Kedinn. Now that he was no longer outcast, he'd hoped that he and Renn and Wolf could be together again, but maybe he was wrong. Wolf hadn't come near the camp since the flood, and with Renn there was a great awkwardness of things unsaid.

  And now Fin-Kedinn was leading him along an elk trail without even telling him why. He moved fast, leaning on his staff, and he had a rawhide pouch slung over one shoulder. They hadn't gone far when Fin-Kedinn halted.

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  Setting the pouch under a hazel tree, he told Torak to lie down.

  Torak asked why.

  "I need to fix your tattoo. You can't live the rest of your life with the mark of the outcast."

  Torak had been wondering about that, but now he was apprehensive. "Are you going to cut it out?"

  "No," said Fin-Kedinn. "Lie down."

  Torak lay on his back and watched the Raven Leader take from the pouch a bone needle, a small antler tattooing hammer, a grindstone, and a buckskin bundle. This he unwrapped to reveal lumps of earthblood, white gypsum, and green tufa stone.

  "I've sent Bale to find the woad," he said, as if that explained anything. "Now keep still."

  Mounting a needle in the hammer, he stretched the skin of Torak's forehead between finger and thumb, and began the rapid piercings which you need for a good tattoo, pausing occasionally to wipe away the blood.

  At first it hurt a lot. Then it simply hurt. To keep his mind off the pain, Torak fixed his eyes on the hazel tree. The nuts were still green, but a squirrel was busily foraging, stopping now and then to churr at the intruders below. After a while Torak shifted his gaze to Fin-Kedinn.

  His foster father.

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  He felt honored and pleased, but also perplexed. "There's something I don't understand," he said. Fin-Kedinn did not reply.

  "When I first met you--when you found out who my father was--you were angry. Since then, sometimes I've thought you liked me. Sometimes not." Placing the earthblood on the grindstone, Fin-Kedinn crushed it with a piece of granite.

  "I know you were angry with my father," Torak went on carefully. "But my mother ... You didn't hate her, too?"

  Fin-Kedinn carried on grinding. "No," he said. "I was in love with her."

  Birdsong echoed through the Forest. Bees buzzed among the meadowsweet.

  "But she loved me as a brother," the Raven Leader went on. "Your father she loved as a woman loves her mate."

  Torak swallowed. "Is that why--why you hated him?"

  Fin-Kedinn sighed. "Growing up can be a kind of soul-sickness, Torak. The name-soul warns to be strongest, so it fights the clan-soul telling it what to do. You've got to find a balance, like a good knife. It took me a while." Dipping a corner of buckskin in earthblood, he rubbed it into Torak's forehead. "I stopped being jealous of your father a long time ago.

  318 But I went on blaming him for your mother's death. I still do." "Why?" "He joined the Soul-Eaters. When she gave birth to you, she was in hiding, far from her clan. If he hadn't put her in danger, she might still be alive." "He didn't mean to put her in danger."

  "Don't ask me to forgive him," warned Fin-Kedinn. "For her sake I took you in. For her sake, and yours, I've made you my foster son. Don't ask for more." Cleaning the grindstone with a clump of moss, he crushed the tufa stone.

  Torak studied the features of the man he'd come to love. "Did you never find a mate?" Fin-Kedinn's lip curled. "Of course I did. There was a girl in the Wolf Clan. But after a time she said we should part, because I still thought of your mother. She was right." Silence. Then Torak said, "What was my mother like?" Fin-Kedinn's face tightened. "Your father must have spoken of her."

  "No. It made him too sad."

  The Raven Leader was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "She knew the Forest like nobody else. She loved it. And it loved her." He met Torak's gaze and his blue eyes glittered. "You're very like her."

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  Torak hadn't expected that. Until now, his mother hadn't been truly real to him: just a shadowy woman of the Red Deer Clan who'd made his medicine horn-- and declared him clanless.

  Fin-Kedinn stared unseeing at the hazel tree. Then he squared his shoulders and resumed his work. "In a way, it's because of your mother that you survived as an outcast. Those creatures who helped you. Beaver, raven, wolf. The Forest itself. Maybe they saw her spirit in you." "But why did she make me clanless? Why did she dothat?"

  Fin-Kedinn sighed. "I don't know, Torak. But she loved you, so--"

  "But how do you know? You didn't even know that she'd had a son!"

  "I knew her," Fin-Kedinn said quietly. "She loved you. So she must have done it to help you."

  Torak couldn't see how being clanless was any help at all.

  "Maybe," Fin-Kedinn added, "the answer lies where she came from. And where you were born."

  "The Deep Forest."

  A breeze stirred the trees, and they nodded agreement.

  "When should I go?" said Torak.

  "Not for a while," said the Raven Leader, grinding

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  gypsum. "There's trouble among the Deep Forest clans; they won't let in outsiders. And it would be foolish to venture in when Thiazzi and Eostra could be anywhere."

  Bale came through the bracken. His face was grave as he handed Fin-Kedinn a small horn cup containing the woad. "I heard you talking about the Soul-Eaters. I don't think you'll find them in the Deep Forest. I think they're in the islands."

  Torak sat up."What?"

  "Something Renn said, a while back. She said the Seal Mage had a fragment of the fire-opal, and it went down with him in the Sea." He shook his head. "I don't think it did. He always kept what he needed for spells in a seal-hide pouch. He didn't have it when he was killed. Late
r, when we burned his shelter, it wasn't there." "That could mean anything," said Torak uneasily.

  "Before you came to the islands," said Bale, "when he was simply our Mage, we would sometimes see a red glow on the Crag. We didn't know what it was. I do now." "The fire-opal," said Torak.

  "And before I left for the Forest," Bale went oh, "there were disturbances--in the woods and around our camp. As if someone were searching for something." Torak thought of the last words of the Viper Mage.

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  Then he noticed that Fin-Kedinn didn't seem surprised.

  "Think about it, Torak," he said as he applied the woad. "If the fragment in your father's knife had been the last, why was only the Viper Mage after it? Why not Thiazzi and Eostra, too?" "So we've achieved nothing!" cried Torak. "It's all to do again!"

  "Not so," said Fin-Kedinn. "Step by step. Remember?"

  Torak made to reply, but the Raven Leader was gathering his things. "Time to go back," he said firmly. "And Torak--we won't tell Renn of the fire-opal just yet. She's got enough to think about."

  When they reached camp, Renn was waiting for them. She glanced at Torak's forehead and nodded. "Ah. I see." Then to Fin-Kedinn, "Although the white part isn't really white, is it?" The Raven Leader shrugged. "He's too brown. But it'll do."

  "Whatisit?" said Torak. "What have you done?"

  Fin-Kedinn grasped his wrist arid raised it high, then spoke to the others who were gathering around. "Each of you bear witness," he said in his clear voice. "This is my foster son: the one who was outcast, but is outcast no more. He's clanless--but from now on, because of this mark he bears, he is forallthe clans!" 322

  There were smiles and murmurs of assent, and Torak could see that whatever the Raven Leader had done, it had worked.

  Bale explained it to him. "He's divided the circle of the outcast into four, one for each of the four quarters of the clans; then he's filled them in. White for the Ice clans, red for the Mountains, green for the Forest, and blue for the Sea. It looks good." He grinned. "Well. Better."

  Torak was still taking that in when Rip and Rek swooped out of nowhere. Rek made a barking noise that drove the camp dogs wild, and Rip--who was carrying something in his beak--dropped it in the mud, narrowly missing Bale. Then they were off, somersaulting over each other with raucous caws. Bale picked up what Rip had let fall, and his eyebrows rose. "Here." He handed it to Torak.